“I would tell them again that I’m sorry,” Mr. Zimmerman, 28, told Sean Hannity on Fox News. “I am sorry that they buried their child. I can’t imagine what it must feel like, and I pray for them daily.”

Mr. Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman who is white and Hispanic, is facing charges of second-degree murder for killing 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was black, in a Florida case that quickly drew national attention. Mr. Zimmerman says he acted out of self-defense in the February incident.

“I personally don’t think it’s sincere,” Mr. Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, said on “Fox and Friends. “I just feel like he’s saying anything he wants to, and it’s not sincere, it’s not from his heart.”

“Again, I don’t feel that it’s sincere either,” said Mr. Martin’s father, Tracy Martin. “George Zimmerman had ample time to apologize to us for taking the life of our son before the first arrest and to come and try to publicly apologize now — he’s just trying to save face.”

Mr. Zimmerman also said he felt the night was “part of God’s plan,” though he did clarify later that he wished “there was something, anything I could have done that would have put me in the position that I wouldn’t have to take his life. I’m sorry that this happened. I hate to think that because of this incident, because of my actions, that it’s polarized and divided America.”

“I don’t understand what he was thinking by saying it was God’s plan that he murdered our child, and I really don’t understand what God he worships, because it’s not the same God I worship,” Mr. Martin said.

“And why would God have him kill an unarmed teenager?” Ms. Fulton said. “I mean, it just makes no sense.”

So could they ever forgive him?

“My son just was murdered a couple months ago, so it’s not something that I can really stomach right now,” Ms. Fulton said. “I mean, maybe in a few years, or I don’t know, but it’s just really difficult right now to actually face and sit in the same room as somebody that murdered my son.”

“I think it’s just much to ask of us to forgive the guy that don’t even regret taking our son’s life, so just to ask us to forgive George Zimmerman — it’s just too much,” Mr. Morgan said.